


you're a thief in the night (you're a bike on the run)

by swanmills



Series: Swan Queen Week: Summer 2016 [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swanmills/pseuds/swanmills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>emma needs a bike to get to work. </p><p>for day 2 of swan queen week: travel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're a thief in the night (you're a bike on the run)

**Author's Note:**

> i apologize for the title; i honestly couldn't think of anything else. if you know me, you should know by now i make terrible puns. i promise the actual work is not as bad.

Emma moved into the town of Storybrooke when she was 16 years old. 16 years too late, more like. Everyone in this town knew each other; and when she moved in, they knew her, but she didn't know them. Word of her fostering had spread like a wildfire, and she was the talk of the small town for several weeks. 

Her foster mother was a freshman English teacher named Mary Margaret. Too sweet for the cynicism of high schoolers, Emma thought she would make a better elementary school teacher. She had dimples, loved to cook, and was decades older than her 29 year old physical self. 

Emma loved her because she gave Emma second chances when most people didn't bother to give her a first.

Emma felt bad that Mary Margaret had to support her on a teacher's salary, and a few weeks before she turned 17, she got a job at Granny’s, the local diner. In the several months she had lived in Storybrooke, she had befriended the daughter of the aforementioned Granny, Ruby, who seemed to always complain about working constantly. When Emma said she was looking for a job, Ruby instantly jumped at the chance.

“Please!” Ruby had begged, clinging onto her newfound friend during lunch. “We’re super understaffed. Ashley’s on maternity leave and Rory went to college in California. We need more people. Plus,” she added, sitting up straight and brushing her streaked hair behind her back, “I'm a pretty cool gal to work with, if I do say so myself.”

“I'll think about it,” said Emma. 

“We pay eight dollars an hour.”

“Sold!” Emma laughed. “I could totally use that money. I feel bad for taking up a lot of Mary Margaret’s resources.”

“Aww, Emma,” Ruby cooed, pinching Emma's cheek playfully. “Miss Blanchard would starve if it meant you could get through college. She really cares about you.”

Emma sobered up. “That's what I'm afraid of.”

\---

Emma works Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. She's cool with it, as she gets the weekends off. Her shifts start at 3:30, half an hour after school gets out, but Emma realizes it's still not enough time to go home, drop her things off, and come back to the diner. She's late on her first day. 

Granny isn't mad, but the stern look she gives a Emma still sends a shiver down her spine. “It's your first day,” she said, while putting fries in the grease pit, “but I would prefer it if you're not late again.”

Emma nods curtly. “Yes, ma'am.”

That night, Emma comes home(?) and tells her problem to Mary Margaret. 

“You need something to take you to Granny’s?” her foster mother had asked, as she handed a plate of microwaved leftovers to Emma. “I don't have an extra car, but I have the bike I rode when I was a teenager. You can use it… stop it from collecting dust.”

“Really?” Emma perked up. “You'd let me?”

Mary Margaret tucked Emma’s blonde curls behind her ears. “Of course, sweetie.”

Emma’s ears turned red and she pushed peas around on her plate as a distraction. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

Mary Margaret shows her the bike. It's neon pink, and Emma will probably ask to cut off the streamers (she had said she had this bike as a teenager… right?), but it's hers now. She's owned more things since moving to Storybrooke than she has in the years before she moved here. 

“I'll have to ride it to school,” Emma said, “since I'll go here and then to Granny’s.”

Mary Margaret nodded, a sad look in her eye. “I'm sad I won't be able to spend time with you on the car ride in the mornings anymore, but I understand.”

“Hey,” Emma shrugged. “Now you get to sleep in, since the elementary school starts an hour later.”

“You're right.” Mary Margaret hugged Emma. “I do.”

And Emma didn't usually like hugs (she'd push them away almost immediately), but for once, she enjoyed the feeling this hug brought. 

\---

Three months pass pretty well for Emma's standards. She's maintaining good grades, she has fun working with Ruby, and Mary Margaret seems to be the mother she never asked for, but always wanted. Her birthday ended up being a small event, but it felt closer, that way. Emma hadn't really had a birthday party before, and didn't want to go to the other end of the spectrum with dozens of people she didn't know. So Mary Margaret lets her invite a few friends over to the apartment and hey eat cake and watch a movie.

But three months is when something happens. Emma's riding to work, as usual, when the chain suddenly gets stuck. Emma wasn't able to handle the sudden stop and she fell, her foot pushing too hard on a pedal as it popped off. She skid onto the asphalt, rolling a few feet from the bike. 

She stayed on the ground, injured, for a minute, trying not to blink in fear that the tears threatening to come out will fall. She sighed, and sat up, looking over her shoulder (ow) to look at the bike. It's absolutely destroyed. She should've known better, as it looks like it was ordered directly from an 90’s preteen catalog, to really think something she had could last. 

She sees a figure out of the corner of her eye. 

“Are you okay?” it asked. Emma knows who it is immediately. It's Regina, the mayor’s daughter. 

(“She's nice,” Ruby said one day as they passed her by in the hallway. “A senior, so she's a year older. She's pretty private, considering her status in the town. Her mother’s apparently a bitch. I know Granny doesn't like her politics.”)

“I'm fine,” she said, and it comes out more gruffly than she expected it to. It feels like there's rocks in her throat (there probably is, honestly), and she gets up, ignoring the helping hand, brushing off dust from her jeans while trying to avoid touching her skinned palms. “Just… just a scratch. I'm fine.”

Regina’s eyebrows knit together curiously. “If you say so.”

“You can, um, leave.” Emma looked at her shoes, and then down at her bike. “I'm fine.”

“Your bike is broken.”

Emma shrugged. “I can walk.”

Yeah, right. 

Regina clenched her jaw, obviously irritated. “Fine. I was just trying to be helpful.” She marched away. 

Emma huffed, picking up her ruined bike and the pedal that came off, rolling its bent skeleton to Granny’s (she had almost made it, and didn't have to walk that far, thank God). She leans it on the brick wall at the back and places the pedal next to it. 

Telling Ruby as she got into the diner (“Oh shit! Are you okay? Do you need to go wash up?”), she thought about what she was going to do. Luckily, she was assigned register tonight, and it gave her a lot of time to think. In other terms, she could space out.

She couldn't walk. Her- Mary Margaret’s home was on the way to Granny’s; even if she cut out stopping and dropping off her school supplies, she'd still be several minutes late. This may be a small town, but it still took time to get places. And what would Mary Margaret think? Would she hate Emma because she broke the bike she'd kept from when she was a kid? Emma had thought that Mary Margaret would be the exception to the rule of adults always letting you down, but Emma didn't want to find that out the hard way. 

After closing down the diner with Ruby, Emma walked home. Ruby said that Granny could throw away the bike on Saturday when the dump truck comes by, so she's empty handed. She kicked loose rocks on the road and stared directly into the street lamps.

About a block from the house, she noticed a garage open in one of the biggest houses on the street. She noticed because she had grown up in the city for most of her life; living in this small town was her first experience of people trusting those around them. Doors weren't locked here. Most people didn't even have fences. 

And in the open garage, the light from one of the many lamps was directed onto a bike. 

Oh shit. Emma tried not to look at it, but utterly failed. That bike was exactly what she needed. She saw that it was cobalt blue, even though it was almost covered in the shadows. 

She looked left. She looked right. She crossed the road. 

It's not like she wanted to steal the bike. Tomorrow was Friday; she could use it and then return it tomorrow night. And then tell Mary Margaret that her own bike was broken. 

Anything to prolong the inevitable. 

She comes home, gives an explanation as to why she's later than usual (“It took longer to close tonight. Leroy wouldn't leave.”) and tried to sleep on a guilty conscience. 

\---

When Regina backed her car out of the garage Friday morning, she saw that her bike was missing. She didn't use it much nowadays, but she noticed the empty spot immediately. 

She narrowed her eyes, but continued with her day. 

\---

The bike theft turned out to turn okay, considering it was a bike theft. Emma slid it into the bike rack that was outside Granny’s and her shift went on like normal. 

She didn't bike to the house she took it from. She walked to the house, rolling the bike beside her. When she got there, the garage was open like it was the night before. 

They're either the most trusting people in this town, Emma thinks, or they didn't even notice the bike was gone.

She had just put the bike back in place when the lights in the garage flicker on. 

Shit. 

She turned around to see Regina Mills glaring at her. 

Double shit. 

There was several awkward moments of Emma staring at Regina like a deer in the headlights before Regina blurted out the first thing that comes to mind. 

“Want to come in?” she asked. 

Emma felt her jaw drop. “You literally just caught me stealing your bike.”

“I don't really use the bike,” Regina admits. “I really only used it when I was 14 and I'd pretend it was a horse.”

Emma laughed. “A horse?! That's insane!”

Why did Regina just admit that? To a thief she barely knew, nonetheless. She changed the topic quickly. “I knew it was you, anyway, considering I saw your mangled bike before mine went missing. It wasn't hard to connect the dots.”

“I'm sorry.” Emma let go on the handlebars and leaned the bike against the garage wall. “I didn't want to be late to work. And I don't have enough time to get from school to work by walking. Your garage was open… and I panicked.”

“You know, if you would've asked, I would've given it to you.”

“Because you don't pretend it's a horse anymore.”

Regina crossed her arms and looked back in the house for a second before looking at Emma. “You want to come in or not?”

“Wait, you were really serious on that offer?” Emma's eyes widened. 

“Yes. My mother made a lot of extra arroz con pollo for dinner and you have AP Biology the hour after me, right?”

Emma nodded, surprised Regina even knew that fact. But she still gave Regina a suspicious look.

“Well, I need some… assistance on the homework and two minds are better than one. Also… I don't really have a lot of friends.”

“You're willing to become friends with me even though I stole your bike? That seems odd.”

Regina shrugged. “I've seen you around school. You don't look that bad. Just stupid sometimes.”

Emma raises an eyebrow at her. 

Regina clears her throat and changes her sentence. “Sorry. Uh, you don't look stupid, you're just human and make mistakes. Plus, I figure if you help me with my assignment, we can be even.”

“Okay,” said Emma, deciding not to argue further. If people wanted to have skewed logic that helped in her favor, she wouldn't stop them. She stepped up into Regina’s house. They were in the laundry room. “I finished mine in class, so I can totally help. And “ay-rose cone poy-yo”? That's rice with chicken, right?”

Regina snorted. “It is. And if you promise to just call it that and not try to pronounce it in Spanish in front of me ever again, I'll box up what you don't eat and you can take it home with you.”

“Sweet!” Emma said. “I can't say no to free food. Maybe while I help you with your biology homework you can teach me to not talk in Spanish like an idiot?”

“Sure,” agrees Regina. “Now, be quiet. Mother’s watching television in her bedroom, and she doesn't care if I invite people over as long as we don't interrupt her shows. My room’s upstairs.”

They were halfway to the stairs when Regina turned around. 

“And Emma?” she asked. 

“What?”

“Please take that bike off my hands.”


End file.
